There's a sameness to my days.
Not very much changes.
I suppose there's a small comfort to the familiar routines.
I try to talk myself into pretending it's the 1800s, and in this particular area, you were lucky to get out to go to church once a week.
I'm in about the same predicament as they were.
I don't drive, and proper civilization isn't within walking distance.
It doesn't help very much.
At least I do have TV, a computer, and a phone.
I don't have the backbreaking chores they had.
I guess if I ever get desperate enough, I could figure out how to call an Uber.
Look, some days you wake up and you just have to give yourself a little pep talk.
Today is pep talk day.
Not very much happened.
We did get the Nintendo Switch Badger bought off of Marketplace.
The seller was thirty minutes early.
Luckily, we're awake early, and she didn't catch us in our nightclothes.
All we had to do was put a pair of walking shoes on and head to the school.
I don't know why we have a town Facebook page.
They never put anything important in it.
Like, oh, I don't know, the fact that the road from the Baptist Church to the school football field was blocked off today.
It looked like maybe a bike race or something.
It didn't bother the seller any.
She just squeezed her car between the sawhorses they were using to block the road and carried on.
We met her at the school flagpole, which technically was blocked off.
She said she was moving and getting rid of a bunch of stuff.
She'd bought the Switch for her stepson, who didn't use it.
So Badger paid, brought it home, and went to factory reset it.
The Switch is refurbished straight from Nintendo.
Apparently, you can see what you played and how long you played it.
The boy only played it for an hour once and never again.
So I don't think Badger is happy with her purchase, but it looks like she got a good deal.
The only other thing that happened is Cowboy disappeared to town for a while and came home with a bunch of lumber.
Then he spent the day making the pit chickens a roof over their enclosure.
He didn't come back inside until 8:30 p.m.
That left Badger and me to entertain ourselves.
We had a very, very long day of mostly watching TV with a little bit of computer time thrown in.
I rack my brain and rack my brain trying to think of what my grandmother did with her time.
I honestly don't remember her leaving the house.
Of course, she was the primary caretaker of three grandkids, and she ran a house.
I just don't remember what she did.
Of course, I also don't remember her ever sitting down unless "The Price Is Right" or her soaps were on.
The woman had to have done something.
Granny's sisters, BB and GG, they held jobs.
I kid you not when I say they both held outside jobs until they were in their late 80s.
Not the year, the age.
GG died at 84 in a house fire.
She was going to work the day she died.
GG is the one with the more varied job history.
BB and GG were pulled out of school when they were 10 to work in a knitting mill.
Then they both went to work as nannies.
They worked all over the state of Tennessee.
Then they went to work cleaning houses for rich families.
BB worked as a house-cleaner and maid until she finally retired at 90, and even then she still took in ironing when she felt like it.
GG worked as a maid and house-cleaner for a bit, then went to work at Magnavox.
Then she retired and went back to working as a maid and house-cleaner in her 70s and 80s.
Neither of them could drive, so they walked all over.
The big difference is that they lived in a place where they could walk.
My grandmother could drive.
She taught herself when she was in her 60s.
She went to work as a waitress when she was 10, then went to work as a maid and a house-cleaner.
She retired when I was born.
My mother told her if she'd retire to take care of me while Mom worked, she'd pay her what she was making as a house-cleaner.
She'd also pay rent, half of the groceries, and half of the utilities.
Which was overkill because my aunt never paid one dime for her groceries, her rent, or the utilities.
All that came from my mom's paycheck.
And my mom and I weren't allowed out of our one little dinky bedroom.
My aunt pretty much took over the whole house.
Yeah, anyway, a little family history there.
I still don't remember what my granny did with her time.
I can tell you exactly what BB and GG did when they weren't working.
BB always had her nose stuck in a book, and GG was always cleaning.
If that woman wasn't OCD and ADHD, I'll eat my hat.
They were twins, born premature in 1915.
I think they said BB was older by several minutes.
She grew to be normal-sized.
GG never grew to be taller than an average 10-year-old.
She was small all of her life.
She wasn’t a little person, she was just very petite.
She was also the dominant twin, the boss of the two.
She was a tiny, hateful spitfire.
Why the living heck they didn't just get separate houses I'll never know.
They were my other mothers.
They were who we escaped to because they never whupped us or yelled at us.
BB liked to pinch if we misbehaved in church, but that was it.
Oh, I guess today is going to be memory day.
I blame Kim for that.
I try my darndest to just forget I ever had a childhood, which really isn't all that hard.
OK, let's go back to my TV.
Badger is on a cooking show kick right now.
As long as it's not Guy Fieri, I'm OK.
Do you know what it's like recovering from a super bad case of COVID and having to watch Guy Fieri for hours 'cause neither of you feel like changing the channel and he was on autoplay?
I used to love him.
Now if I see one of his shows, I click off as fast as I can.
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